US nuclear waste could provide terror target

A large cloud of lethal radioactive fallout could be released by a terrorist attack on the nuclear waste stored at up to 103 reactors in the US, according to an expert report for the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS).

The cooling ponds in which spent radioactive fuel is kept could be severely damaged by crashing aircraft, high-powered weapons or explosives, the report says. With the water draining away, the fuel cladding, made of a zirconium alloy, would overheat and burst into flames.

This "could release large quantities of radioactive material into the environment", the report concludes. It was compiled by a committee of 15 leading scientists from universities, research institutes and consultancies in response to a request from the US Congress.

"Our findings were unanimous," says committee chair, Louis Lanzerotti, from the New Jersey Institute of Technology. "The committee identified several terrorist attack scenarios that could have potentially severe consequences."

The NAS was asked to investigate the issue after a report by nuclear critics in 2003 suggested that an attack on a cooling pond could release more radioactivity than the Chernobyl reactor accident in Ukraine in 1986. Such a release would cause thousands of deaths from cancer, the critics claimed.

Although their worrying claims were rejected by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the nuclear industry at the time, they have now been backed by the NAS report. "The committee judges that some of their release estimates should not be dismissed," it says.

Under water over ground

Members of the NAS committee, however, cannot say precisely how many of the 12-metre-deep cooling ponds are at risk. Those at the 34 boiling water reactors in the US might be more vulnerable because they are located above the ground under thin steel covers. The ponds at 69 pressurised water reactors are at ground level.

The dangers at each individual plant should now be analysed, the NAS report says, and it might be "prudent" to move some waste into dry
stores. It also recommends urgent action, including reducing the risks by installing heavy-duty water sprinklers to provide back-up cooling.

The NAS published a declassified version of its report on 6 April after an argument with the NRC over what could be made public without helping terrorists. The NRC is criticised in the report for undermining public confidence by withholding information on the vulnerability of spent fuel ponds.

"Unreasonable" scenarios

In a letter to Congress on 14 March, the NRC said that some of the scenarios in the NAS report were "unreasonable", and some of its recommendations "lacked a sound technical basis". Nevertheless, in a statement on 6 April, it described the report as "important" and said it was giving its recommendations "serious consideration".

Since the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001, the NRC pointed out it had issued "no fewer than nine sets of mandatory instructions or guidance to nuclear plant operators to improve security of nuclear power plants, including spent fuel in storage".

But the NRC was accused of being "obstructive" by Frank von Hippel, from Princeton University in New Jersey, and one of the authors of the 2003 report which first raised the alarm. "The commission needs to be restored as a regulatory agency not cowed by the nuclear industry," he told New Scientist.

"Whatever the chances of an attack on the spent fuel pools, the NAS study shows that we've not taken all reasonable precautions to mitigate its consequences," adds David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer from the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington DC. "Those steps must be taken."

LG releases webOS Open Source Edition, looks to expand webOS usage

LG’s smart TVs ship with an operating system called webOS, which is the latest version of an operating system that was developed by Palm to run on phones, acquired by HP to use with tablets, and eventually sold to LG, which is still using it today.
But now LG wants to expand the adoption of webOS and the company is working with the South Korean government to solicit business proposals from other companies interested in using webOS.
LG has also released a webOS Open Source Edition version of the operating system.

Test driving 4 open source music players and more

In my last article, I described my latest music problem: I need an additional stage of amplification to make proper use of my new phono cartridge. While my pre-amplifier contains a phono stage, its gain is only suitable for cartridges that output about 5mV, whereas my new cartridge has a nominal output of 0.4mV.
Based on my investigation, I liked the looks of the Muffsy phono kits, so I ordered the head amplifier, the power supply, and the back panel. I also needed to obtain a case to hold the boards and the back panel, available online from many vendors. Muffsy does not sell the “wall wart” necessary to power the unit, so I ordered one of those from a supplier in California. Finally, inspecting my soldering iron, solder “sucker,” and solder, I’ve realized I need to do better—so a bit more shopping, online or local, is in order there. Finally, for those, like me, whose soldering skills may be rusty and perhaps were not all that great to begin with, Muffsy kindly offers links to two instructional videos.

While this week's Wine 3.4 release delivers on working Wine Vulkan ICD support for beginning to allow Windows Vulkan programs to work under Wine assuming the host has Vulkan API support, this current implementation still requires the user to install the Windows Vulkan SDK.
At the moment those wanting to use Windows Vulkan games/applications under Wine still need to download the LunarG Vulkan SDK for Windows in order to obtain the Vulkan loader (DLL) for pairing with Wine's Vulkan ICD driver.

Here’s GNOME 3.28 – See What’s New

The latest version of GNOME 3 has been released today. Version 3.28 contains six months of work and new features by the GNOME community and comes with many improvements and new features.
One major new feature for this release is automatic downloading of operating systems in Boxes, which takes the work out of creating and running virtual machines – just pick the operating system that you want to create a virtual machine of, and Boxes will now download and install it for you.
Other highlights include improvements to the Calendar and Contacts applications, the ability to star files and folders in the Files application, and improved support for Thunderbolt 3 and Bluetooth LE devices. GNOME’s default UI font has also been overhauled to be more attractive and easy to read, and the on-screen keyboard has been rewritten to be more reliable and has layouts for a number of different locales.
Also: textures and paintables